Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation

#115
Title: Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation
Author: Michael Zielenziger
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2006
Genre: psychology, anthropology
344 pages 

Fascinating and generally accessible, though not always as well integrated as it could be, this look at Japan's modernization argues that several culture-bound psychological syndromes present in Japan today are consequences of Japan's economic, political, and cultural course. This is an interesting topic and Zielenziger does a reasonable job of describing the features and treatment of hikikomori (withdrawal to one's room, often by a young male), parasaito (young adult women who live with their families and spend their money on luxuries), and to a certain extent, futoko (children and adolescents who refuse to go to school because of bullying), all of which I might characterize as disorders of quality of engagement with others. Zielenziger's more abstract historical and cultural chapters are much drier than those in which he describes people and specific situations, but he demonstrates why this more removed information is necessary for an appreciation of the context of these syndromes. One might assume from his description that everyone in Japan works in an office shuffling papers, or in technical manufacturing, but other than that the material seems relatively complete and coherent. A comparison with South Korea provides an interesting comparison and underscores the possible differences between a society's taking on outside cultural practices and acquiring the cultural beliefs that inform those practices.

As a psychologist, I'd have liked more about hikikomori, parasaito, and futoko, particularly about their historical rise, sociopsychological disorders that have diminished during the push for modernity, and empirical data (of which there is little). A Japanese pediatrician recently told me at a conference that hikikomori is considered a bio-psycho-social disorder in Japan that warrants, among other diagnoses, the label "depression" as defined in DSM, but I did not see this perspective reflected here. Read with Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask for a more intimate and visceral description of school bullying and ways in which social conformity is enforced.

Zielenziger includes a glossary, good notes, and an index. I mention these only because I will bemoan their absence when I finish reading and review Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond.